


Extended Shift

by nowstfucallicles



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, M/M, POV Spock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 22:11:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11022609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowstfucallicles/pseuds/nowstfucallicles
Summary: He was aware that it needed to be stopped. That it was him who needed to stop it. Knowing that he had erred in indulging it from the very beginning. And still the urgency of the thought eluded him. Logic seemed to elude him, as it had minutes ago, and even what remained the stronger part of his nature – the Vulcan part – failed to restrain him.





	Extended Shift

“It’s familiar…” 

The captain was leaning over the row of specimens. He kept smelling the long, glossy leaves as if searching for something. Spock paused his study of the readings. 

“Highly unlikely. There is no record of these plants in any known culture.“

“The scent, it reminds me of Earth. Something back in the days.” 

Spock stepped over to him. He could smell nothing but the dense variant of chlorophyll, still he stood there for a while, watching the specimens. The laboratory was silent around them, the second shift having ended hours ago. Under the blue and grey filters most instruments lay still, the interfaces blinking slowly on standby. Spock kept following the readings on the specimens, while going over the pattern recognition algorithm. He still found it lacking – incomplete. It needed further adjustment.

“The wetlands,” the captain said, “that’s what it smells like.” 

Spock looked at him briefly, gauging his expression. Relaxed, with a vague emotion. Sentimentality. 

“Some olfactory memories are particularly vivid,” he said. “They can be linked to complex memories or even feelings. Still, misattributions are possible.”

“So you don’t trust my memory.” 

“Scientific data usually proves to be more reliable.” 

“I see.” The captain was watching him, amused. Not merely relaxation, but there was a certain calm about him due to the late hour. Spock had noticed it before, more than once during these visits. 

“You find them fascinating.” Jim pointed towards the plants.

“Of course. A remarkable finding, even for this survey.” 

“Why’s that?”

“Their bioluminescence,” Spock said. “The physical process itself is quite interesting, but the real question seems to be that of its purpose. Here.” 

He pointed at a large leaf near the captain. It had begun to open itself, its fine structure shining with an undulating pulse. A shimmer, barely perceptible. Communication. Patterns. A subtle phenomenon flowing through the room – visible, yet easy to miss. The survey party had almost missed it, barely picking it up on the tricorder. Spock might have missed it himself. He leant closer, watching the plant with the captain, waiting for him to see.

“Is it… signaling?” Jim asked. 

“That is the current hypothesis.”

“Do you think it’s communication?” 

“There are indications of language, but no conclusive proof.”

Spock kept watching the minute changes in the plants’ green, his mind returning to the unfinished algorithm. A new idea occurred to him and he resumed focus at once, proceeding to reconstruct the algorithm. He began rearranging the field of specifications, now choosing a different, less direct approach. It would not take the newest readings into account, yet it promised acceptable results. 

“There are social animals,” Jim said, “that use pigmentation to communicate.”

“The Humboldt squid from your Pacific Ocean, also the stormbirds of Coridan. However, there are no matches in the database.”

“What about the universal translator?”

“Still gathering the data necessary for recalibration.”

Spock concentrated on the processed readings, trying to see if the algorithm fit. He inserted a new card into the computer, containing the recent recordings. Minimal changes since they had left orbit. He was confident that within the timeline he would understand the plant’s functions. That he could trace back the chemical and physical processes as well as the behavioral ones. Not merely document but fully analyse the species, despite the difficulties they had sampling it. He reconsidered the algorithm and continued to modify the loops.

“Could be a new type of language. You’re right, Spock. These are remarkable.“ Jim turned to look at him. “Was it the last batch we beamed up from the shore?”

“Correct.”

The captain nodded. “Good call.”

There was an air of satisfaction about him, an unmistakable contentment that caught Spock’s attention. What mattered to Jim, primarily, was not the analysis, nor achieving a thorough understanding of the life-form. It was that they had succeeded in sampling it. That they had found and secured it in the shade of a cataclysmic flow. He valued the aspect of discovery, of preservation, more than most of his rank. Spock felt a stirring of friendship at the thought. Distinctly. A sense of familiarity that for a moment held the unfinished algorithm suspended in his thoughts. 

“Going to put any of the linguists on it?”

“I have considered it,” Spock said. 

He had determined that by the end of his extended shift he would have finished the groundwork. His own linguistic capacities were more than sufficient for the task. He continued the modifications on the algorithm while still monitoring the readings. 

“All yours then. I can’t imagine a more capable analyst.”

Spock held in, letting go of his lines of thought. He glanced at the captain, hearing the words ring out and listening closely for something like mockery. Finding none. 

“What makes you think so?”

“Your intuition for language. Your capacity for understanding even the most unfamiliar things. Or beings.”

“I’m afraid you confuse technique with inclination. There are Vulcan methods that seek to establish immediate contact. Achieving a basic understanding of a language is quite different. “

“But the readiness to reach out, the will to bridge the gap. That’s hardly technique.” There was an aspect of enthusiasm to his voice, a slight rise. “I’ve seen you do it before. You want to understand, it’s why you do.”

“I have set a timeline of 2,3 solar days.”

“Of course.” The captain smiled. A lingering, easy smile, one that was, Spock still noted it, private. “I expected no less.”

Jim leant closer, regarding him. Some of the relaxation was gone and there was an attention about him, not quite focused. A streak of anticipation. Spock held his gaze with some curiosity before turning back to the readings. He began overlaying them with the algorithm, running several tentative calculations. Around the laboratory the sound of ventilation was increasing. Valves opening and closing in rhythm, accelerated due to the residual ash.

The captain shifted, his shoulder slowly settling against Spock’s. Leaning against him while watching the specimens, his eyes following their row. Spock stood still for a moment, observing the gesture. It always seemed new to him, even though he had come to expect it. Learnt to expect it. It had become part of these visits. A prolonged contact that held little formal meaning, instead it was personal, almost confidential in nature. Carrying a sentiment he had come to recognize in Jim. A familiarity. Affection. 

Jim was watching him with hooded eyes, his smile not quite gone. Looking at him as if measuring a challenge, yet with a starkness of emotion that made Spock pause. Not quite affection. Nor friendship. But a seeking, intimate thing. Spock recognized it and his focus began to shift, almost to waver. He was feeling it again, as if in response to what he was seeing in Jim. Feeling sympathy at first, then the surge of an enticing, constricting impulse – the beginning of an emotion he had come to know as well. He halted it at once, letting it hover just outside his thoughts. Barred from affecting him, yet not quite removed. 

He was drawn to Jim. Being moved towards him, even as he was keeping the emotion in place. He had not given way to it before, nor even considered it. Yet this time, he slightly adjusted his thoughts. He began to let that impulse pass through, letting it in and feeling its restlessness spread into his mind. Allowing for it to move him, after all. As if it had been no more than following an argument to its conclusion. 

He placed the marker aside and slowly raised his hand. Touching it to Jim’s forehead. Letting his finger trace over the line of his brow. He could see the surprise in Jim’s eyes, a deeper, more unsuspecting kind than his own. His question. He could feel the viscosity of his skin, the fine vibration of his pulse. He did not feel for his thoughts, keeping away from the barrier even as he saw something like an ache slide over his features. His fingers passed over the temple, then down to the corner of his lips. It was a sensation akin to concentration. Akin to fever. He stilled his hand, letting it unfold. 

Jim gripped him by the shoulders. Gripping him hard and for an instant it surprised Spock. The sudden nearness, the very acuteness of it. The touch as Jim leant forward, his face against Spock’s, capturing his lips. Spock was feeling him. Sensing him. The soft hollow of his mouth, the alien, ferrous taste he had thought of, often, on the verge of his mind. With a curiosity he knew had been something else. That had been this, all along. The instinct-laden and heavy feel now rising to his skin. He did not try to contain it. Letting it reach into his consciousness in slow strands of heat.

Jim’s lips were pressing against his, their initial force remaining. Sealed against his own. His hands held on to Spock’s shoulders and he seemed focused, his expression fluctuating with an unfamiliar strain. Spock moved closer. Closer for the wet slide of his lip between his own. It was arresting. Senselessly intimate, even in its physicality. He let it sink in as he did with every sensation. Each motion and slick, exhilarating feel. Letting it take hold in him with the depth and clarity of inextinguishable memory.

He was aware that it needed to be stopped. That it was him who needed to stop it. Knowing that he had erred in indulging it from the very beginning. And still the urgency of the thought eluded him. Logic seemed to elude him, as it had minutes ago, and even what remained the stronger part of his nature – the Vulcan part – failed to restrain him. 

“Not strictly according to lab protocol,” Jim said. He leant back his head, his eyes flashing up before Spock. 

“In violation of several regulations, in fact.”

“Glad you’re keeping track.”

“I endeavor to,” Spock said, “in every situation.”

Jim was standing still, as close as before. His features had softened, yet the air of challenge was still there. There was a slight rise about his lips that attracted Spock. The fresh impression of their feel, the way they had tasted him. Suddenly, keenly. 

“I know this isn’t your element,” Jim said. “It's quite unusual as it is.”

“And still…”

Spock could see it in him. The emotion he had never seen unconcealed before, never seen quite in the open. An erratic and unabashed flux. Relief. Want. Affection. At the same time something unsure and fragmented. He was feeling it in himself as well, a similar alloy, more disctinctly, more prominently than ever. Laced with shame, yet not any weaker for it. Lingering in the open of his mind. Permeating it. He inclined his head, his eyes locked with Jim’s. He had not underestimated the strength of the emotion. Not in himself or Jim. He had not miscalculated his own means of control, either. Where he had erred, had been his readiness to accept it. His willingness to accept emotion and the power it held. To heed it. Follow it.

Jim’s hand slid up to the side of his neck. The close proximity almost as much of a stimulant as the immediacy of touch. A lasting, heaving feel that he knew he would have to contain soon. Contain and block from his mind, once again. Jim stepped back, his hand feeling along Spock’s collar, over his neck, before moving away. 

“Just a minute, then I’ll let you go back to work,” he said. His voice lowered. “They say there’s a time and a place for everything. Even the things that aren’t within the rules. I'll find a way, Spock… if it’s what you want.”

Spock looked at the specimens and then up at the constant flow of readings. He understood and he moved slightly to straighten himself. He needed little time to consider it.

“It is,” he said. 

He glanced at Jim once more, taking in his features. Their subtle tightening with pleasure. Then he turned aside to view the readings. He would have to go back in the recordings, approximately 11,4 minutes. Check for divergent patterns and complete the algorithm before the end of his shift, as he had planned to do. He could still stay within timeline, given he continued at once. 

His perception was still sensitized. His mind pulsating with emotion. It would be challenging to achieve the former level of concentration, even with his skills and level of practice. He took a long breath and began structuring his thoughts. By degrees and with increasing speed. Removing the sharp awareness of Jim’s presence. Shutting out memory by memory, feeling by feeling. Fresh ones and those of the past alike.

Jim picked up the marker and handed it back to him. There was an ease about him, different from before. With reverberations of emotion that Spock did not miss, even with his focus trained on the algorithm. Cosidering a rare link he suspected would be the solution. 

“Good luck with these.” Jim nodded towards the plants. “See if you can get them to talk.”

He was heading for the door and Spock glanced back at him. Allowing for a light, quick flare of heat, only for an instant. A flash of the feeling from before. And anticipation. Then his attention returned to the specimens in front of him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!


End file.
